Internet Traffic and Connectivity during Circuit Breaker Period

3 Mr Liang Eng Hwa asked the Minister for Communications and Information (a) what is the extent of the surge in Internet data traffic during the circuit breaker period; (b) whether there have been capacity and Internet slowness issues; and (c) how are the industry players responding.

The Minister for Communications and Information (Mr S Iswaran): Mr Speaker, Sir, since the start of the circuit breaker, our telecom operators have seen an increase in their network traffic, particularly for fixed broadband and daytime usage due to telecommuting and home-based learning. On the whole, the volume of traffic remains well within each operator's network capacity, with a buffer of at least 30%.

Some users may have experienced a longer wait when accessing certain websites or buffering when viewing online content. One reason for this is the usage patterns in the home rather than a network capacity constraint per se. To help users optimise their home Internet experience, IMDA has provided tips on its website and social media platforms on how users can share and manage their bandwidth consumption, such as closing unused mobile apps which are running in the background.

Notwithstanding the current healthy capacity headroom in their networks, my Ministry and IMDA are working with our telecom operators to further increase their buffers. This is to ensure that we are prepared for a possible rise in future demand, and also to help ensure that individuals, households and businesses will continue to have strong and reliable Internet connectivity.

Our experience in recent months has underscored the importance of investing to build up a robust and resilient infocomm infrastructure. My Ministry and IMDA will continue to ensure that our telecom infrastructure keeps pace with demand and meets our connectivity needs, especially as digitalisation accelerates in our economy and society.

Mr Liang Eng Hwa (Holland-Bukit Timah): Sir, with more people working from home, studying from home or even socialising from home, it is even more critical that our network capacity and resilient can cope with the increase in the Internet traffic.

I would like to ask the Minister on a particular incident on 15 April, where there were two incidents of network disruptions to Starhub's home broadband services. Can I ask the Minister whether these disruptions were due the operator's capacity not being able to cope with the high network traffic for that particular day, and whether IMDA is now satisfied that the operator has rectified the issues and can prevent recurrence of such incidents again?

Mr S Iswaran: Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank the Member for his question. I think he makes a very important point about the importance of having resilient inforcomm infrastructure. I think that importance is accentuated in circumstances like the present, when many are telecommuting and many students are going through home-based learning and so on.

On the specific incidents that the Member has highlighted with respect to Starhub, based on the information that is available from Starhub as of now, the two recent disruptions to its fibre broadband service were caused by network equipment failure and also a domain name server issue, respectively. It was not, based on the information we have as of now, due to network traffic or network capacity issues. Having said that IMDA is investigating into the matter and once its investigation comes to a close, we will draw the appropriate conclusions and take the necessary steps.

I would add, to address the Members' broader concerns, from a regulatory perspective, IMDA's approach has been to (a) design the regulations so that our telcos are incentivised to plan, design an infocomm infrastructure that is robust and resilient. Second, to build in to this infrastructure, back-ups, diversity and and resilience through this, so that if there is a need, and this leads to the third point, they are able to recover swiftly. So, these are the key design parameters when we think about the infocomm infrastructure and the regulatory intent of IMDA.

Having said that, where an operator has been found to have fallen short, either because of negligence or because they did not comply with specific requirements, then IMDA will take appropriate action including imposing penalties as provided for under the legislation.